Wrestlemania Anthology

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

For something that's been the talk of the 'net for years, this is a set that should've gone all out to blow us away. Instead, early reports indicate that the set simply blows. You'll get your Manias, but expect a lot of annoying hang-ups to come with 'em.

 

I read some thoughts from someone who got the set early and damn. I suppose we'll start with the positive.

 

- All the Manias available at a relatively low price. Being able to pick up five of them at a time for roughly six bucks a show isn't bad at all.

 

Now that we've got that out of the way, the bad.

 

- The packaging. It would seem that the sets come in digipaks, which means unfolding a neverending row of discs to select which one you'd like to watch. This also means that getting rid of individual shows isn't really feasible. Use of the slim cases that are becoming the norm in larger sets would've been nice.

 

- WM XXI. Okay, so you probably saw the early pics of the set. You may have noticed that there seemed to be a disc on the inside of the top of the box. You weren't seeing things. That's WM XXI and apparently, it's attached to the top with no sort of protection. Brilliant, WWE. Brilliant. There's no telling what kind of hell you'll experience should this thing come loose between the manufacturer and your player.

 

- Flippers! Not all, but many of the shows are flippers. These are notorious for defects, but hey, gotta save the bucks. They're not a multi-million dollar company or anything.

 

- Hey, it's all blurry. Not really surprising, but the Manias that have the scratch logo involved are all blurred. Thankfully, I didn't part with the ones I already owned, because I've found the programs with blurriness everywhere is too distracting to deal with.

 

- Those cheap bastards. No Eye of the Tiger at Wrestlemania I. I guess they're not making enough to pay some royalities to ensure the show remained intract to its original form.

 

- Sparse on the extras. I guess some interviews here and there is essentially all we get in the way of bonus material. They had years to devise this bitch, but it's skimpy, as many of us feared.

 

I'll say this. Wrestlemania is supposed to be this huge deal. And it is. Or at least, it used to be. This is a set that only hardcore collectors are likely to purchase. So why not go the extra mile and devote two discs to each Mania? How about instead of having a "deluxe" set with a leather case and Vince's autograph, they offer a REAL deluxe set? I'll get the first two sets for sure, but the hell with the big ass box set. Vince isn't getting my dollars for this thrown together hack job.

[Guest teke184]

Hrm...

 

Manually converting my Wrestlemania VHS tapes to DVD sounds like a good idea right about now.

[Guest Alfdogg]

Did they at least keep Ventura's commentary on the first six?

[Guest bravesfan]

Did they at least keep Ventura's commentary on the first six?

Yes.

 

The first two digipaks are definite purchases sooner or later.

[sek69]

I got the first four WMs from the UK in that "Tagged Classics" thing they do with old school PPVs. The DVD of WM 1 had all the music cut or dubbed over with bland rock music, so it was done before this box set.

 

This seems to be the most horribly designed box set the WWE could have imagined. Sticking WM XXI on top and hoping it won't fall off and get scratched is just idiotic.

 

How many DVD packaging fuck-ups have they had so far? I remember they had to offer new cases for the Flair set, the discs fell out of most the Undertaker sets....Christ, you'd think they'd put more into these since DVDs are their best money makers.

 

I'm wondering, do they still censor every mention of "Federation" when someone says "World Wrestling Federation"? I know they did when they first started getting the F out, but I heard a few "federation"s on the Taker set.

[Marty]

"World Wrestling Federation" is still legal for them to use and always was. That's why, if they show a RAW match from the Attitude era, with the ring apron saying "World Wrestling Federation", it's never blurred out. It's the initials that's the issue. They'll blank out the "F" if someone says "WWF", as well as blur out any graphic mentioning of the initials (like there always was circa 1983/84) as well as blur out the Attitude logo.

 

I'm on the fence about this set after the news. Still considering it, although I'm not buying it anytime soon due to personal reasons. Won't buy the Jake Roberts set either anytime soon for the same reasons. The only one I'm rushing out to buy when it comes out is the Bret Hart set, although, again, I'm worried about the quality of presentation if the production team was as rushed as they were, according to Dave Meltzer's last report of it.

[Mad Dog]

Hrm...

 

Manually converting my Wrestlemania VHS tapes to DVD sounds like a good idea right about now.

Bingo.......

 

for the price of this set I could go out and buy a DVD recorder and convert Wrestlemania I-XIV to DVD for a similar price and probably have a better quality copy since the blurs would be gone.

[sek69]

It's all just a huge slap in the face to the one segment of the fanbase that sticks with Vince no matter what stupid crap he pulls.

 

"Hey, thanks for staying around all these years, here's the shittiest WM box set we could come up with!"

[Guest SweetMama Scaat]

So, Bruiser Chong you main complaint is with the packaging though right. How they literally put it together?

 

 

You also mentioned sparse extras? Do you have a list? All the sets (therye also available in 4 sets as oppossed to the one big box set) have extra discs, and alot of the wrestelmanias werent big enough to warrant multiple disc per event so im having a contemplation that theres entire disc full of extras.

[sek69]

Every report I've read said there is almost no extras in the big box at least, maybe the smaller sets have some.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

From what I heard, some interviews made up the few extras in the set. Certainly not close to all they could've put together.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

Word is that several themes have been edited. Among them, the Big Bossman's, Demolition's, Hulk Hogan's, and the Limp Bizkit theme from WM X-7. This just keeps sounding better and better!

[Mad Dog]

Weren't the Bossman and Demolition's in house? Why did they go so fucking cheap on this show?

[sek69]

It's not bad enough that they overdub themes, but they do them in the most awkward way possible.

 

Two that leap to mind are Christy Hemme's theme getting replaced by generic elevator music at WM (despite her dancing to the beat of her original music, making her look like a retard) and any match where Taker used Kid Rock as a theme on his 3 disc set.

 

I know Hogan's got edited in WM1 since he was using Eye of the Tiger then, but I can't figure out why in-house themes get dubbed.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

Once I find out the extras on these sets, I'll make my decision if I just wanna go R2 and get the Tagged Classics releases of these titles. Won't have to deal with all this non-sense that way.

[Marty]

I imagine Stacy Keibler's Kid Rock theme is also edited where applicable.

 

Bossman's I'm clueless about. Who wrote his theme back in the day?

 

Demolition's: Does Rick Derringer own the rights to that song? Or does Al Eadie (Demolition Ax) own all things Demolition, including that? Those are my best guesses for that.

 

Not only will Hogan's Eye Of The Tiger theme be edited, but so will WMX8 and XIX, where he had Voodoo Child. I found that out with the Undertaker DVD, where they edited that for the Judgment Day 2002 match.

 

Really, though, any blurring of the logo or whatever I can understand, but stuff like this, on a box set that celebrates an event that they take pride in more than anything else, is inexcusable. Would it kill Vince to contact Stallone and say, "Can I use Eye of the Tiger?" or "Who do I talk to about that?" or for him to re-contact Kid Rock, Durst, Derringer (if necessary), whoever has the rights to Hendrix's music, etc. for this? This just reeks of laziness.

 

I actually saw the set at a store today, with someone ready to pick it up, who's a casual fan. I told him about the spare disc packaging, the copyright issues, the lack of extras, among other things, and it caused him to stop in his tracks. It's affecting the casual fan too. If word gets out on these shortcomings, sales for this might not be pretty.

[Marty]

BTW, here's another thought: If they cut out Limp Bizkit's stuff, does that mean Undertaker's entrance at XIX is cut out period?

[sek69]

What sucks is, if this set doesn't sell because it's cheaply made, Vince is likely to interpret it as there not being a market for big box sets. Anything but admitting they cheap-assed it.

[Marty]

I just realized now that they can have live performances, so they will have Limp Bizkit's Undertaker live entrance at WM XIX, as well as the two HHH Motorhead ones at X-7 and 21.

 

I retract my above post.

 

Oh, and Jimmy Hart owns the rights to a lot of the songs edited out (Demos, Bossman) and they didn't want to pay *him* royalties. That's why they're not in.

[sek69]

I thought for sure that Jimmy Hart appearing for the HOF/WM stuff meant they had some sort of deal.

 

For that matter, how did he retain the rights for music he came up with while under WWF contract? Isn't it Business 101 that anything created while under contract to a company reverts to that company's possession when the person leaves?

 

 

Netflix has the 4 individual 5-disc sets, but I don't know if I even want to put it in my queue with everything all chopped and dubbed.

[Guest The Man in Blak]

For that matter, how did he retain the rights for music he came up with while under WWF contract? Isn't it Business 101 that anything created while under contract to a company reverts to that company's possession when the person leaves?

With music being viewed as more of a "creative" property, I imagine that Jimmy Hart may potentially have many more rights to the music he created in the WWF than, say, a software developer would have over a program he created in an IT company.

[Marty]

So I got the set. (Hey, I don't have any of the others on VHS, so I almost had no choice. Plus, at $200 CDN for 21 shows, I don't think I did too bad. That's less than $10 for a three-hour show. That's bargain bin type prices there.)

 

Anyways, packaging was fine for me. The hidden WM21 disc is certainly unorthodox, but it was both secure for me, and easy to get out. The disc itself was fine, not scratched or anything, and since I'm very fussy about taking care of my DVDs, I don't think I'll have too much of a problem with it. Actually, the WM21 disc didn't worry me nearly as much as the WM7 disc (looked like a chip off the outside of it, which may affect the latter portion of the first side of the show) and the WM14 disc (looked kinda greasy on the outside, which may have affected the Austin-Michaels match). Both those cases were fine, as I tested them immediately, and the quality is fine.

 

Quality of what I've seen is great too. As I said, I've seen the latter portions of WM7 and WM14, as well as the initial part of WM1 and watched, and slept through, all of WM3. Everything has played fine, which has been a concern, as I've had some issues with choppiness on a couple WWE DVDs (original WM21 and Undertaker DVD). At least with the set I got, they did their homework and made sure the playability was flawless.

 

Ventura's commentary is in, of course, which I'm sure they had no choice, since there's only a bunch of film footage of him in as well, so it would've come across as stupid. I haven't seen any of the music editing yet, so no comment on it yet. As far as WWE-esque legal editing goes, you do get your blurriness, as I experienced during Michaels-Austin, but it appears they've done a few things to make it look like a professional editing job rather than the half-assed stuff they've done in the past. There's the reported dubbing of Hogan saying "WWE" (which I've yet to see) on WM5, but I liked what they did in WM14 where they have, in graphic form, "Shawn Michaels WWE Champion". I don't remember the show, but if they had "WWF" there instead, at least they didn't simply blur it out, is what I'm saying. I know it's really re-writing history, but if I'm forking out $200, I'd like some work like that done on their editing, especially on a set that celebrates their biggest PPV each year. Bravo to the WWE for that.

 

The artwork in the inserts is neat. I like how in each set, there's a different bit of face-to-face artwork, thus showing continuity in the separate sets. (In order, there's Hogan-Andre, Hogan-Warrior, Shawn-Bret, and Austin-Rock.) There's also a bunch of promo posters from over the years as part of the decoration of them, as well as a collage of different significant events from all the WMs. Kind of hard to explain, but it's pretty neat.

 

Overall, I may be in the minority, but I'm happy. Extras may be nice, but at least all of them are on DVD now, and anyone who missed an opportunity to pick up 16-18 before the big name change can do so now. To be honest, I really wish I wasn't at work right now.

 

Now, hopefully the Bret Hart DVD leaves me with the same positive impression.